Chapter I: A Partner in Crime
September 20, 2005. It was a dark and stormy night. Rain pattered on the roof of the mansion and rolled off of it into the moist ground at the edge of the pine forest near constantly. Thunder roared like an angry lion, and only the moon dared to show his face. An occasional bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, exposing a person dressed entirely in black and hidden in the skylight window, peering through an open panel at a man gently resting in a comfy bed.
The person on the skylight tensed, his face soaked by his damp silken ski mask. His target was heavily guarded by two behemoth security guards, each carrying a machine gun with a belt long enough to encompass an elephant. He had been waiting most of the night for the guards' vigil to falter, but they didn't look like they had anywhere else to go at the moment. The person sighed and thought, 'How do I get myself into these messes?'
He reminisced about the current events of the past week, mostly reasons to kill the man in the bed, including Microsoft's expansion of its heinous X-box 360 project, which would all but ruin Nintendo's business. Nintendo had already taken a huge hit with the insidious Halo epidemic, and this new mysterious project was calculated to even surpass this amount of publicity. Who better to take out to halt production permanently and save Nintendo than the main ringleader of the X-box cult, the man in the bed?
This reminiscing gave the black-clad assassin a new breath of courage. He took out one steel four-point star with razor sharp edges out of a pouch on his belt and threw it at the first of the two guards, careful to keep his position secret. The shuriken cut off a lock of the guard's hair and stuck in the bedside dresser.
This guard turned towards the darkened skylight above his employer's bed and fired his machine gun. All he hit was the glass window. Shards of glass fell to the bed, but all of them were caught in the soft, plushy sheets. The man buried in these sheets bolted upright at the noise and cried, "What is the meaning of this?" at the guard who jumped the gun.
"It's competitive espionage," the guard replied, holding up the shuriken. A classic N64 symbol was emblazed on it.
"This is an outrage!" shouted the man. "I pay you two imbeciles to guard my life, and here I find an ignorant Nintendo assassin making an attempt on my life?"
"This isn't our fault, boss," piped up the other guard. "Blame the security cameras. They failed to warn us about—"
"Enough! I've had it with your excuses!" thundered the man. "Either find and annihilate this assailant, or start looking for new jobs! Now, go!"
The two guards ran out of the room, their machine gun belts dragging behind them.
The man in the bed took out a cell phone from off of his mantel, switched it on, and said, "Secretary, bring me two more bodyguards to replace my brothers."
The assassin took off into the woods surrounding the manor, a massive jungle surrounding the house for a mile. The brush was as thick as smog and slashed at him like the claws of a rabid animal. "Pines," the assassin muttered to himself, "why did it have to be pines?" A pine needle caught in his teeth quieted him.
He chanced a look behind him and saw two circles of light dancing from the edge of the woods, staring like the eyes of the devil. "Security guards, just my luck." He kept running. As he ran, he noticed the eyes coming closer, giving chase. Soon, they'd be on him. To ensure this, a bullet whizzed through the air and struck a branch clear off of its tree. Several more struck other trees that would have been the assassin, had it not been for a few quick movements. The flashlights still kept coming.
The assassin tore off his facemask and tucked it on his belt; it was so soaked with sweat that he couldn't breathe. The lightning that flashed revealed messy, brown curls on a young face, a teenager with sky-blue eyes. This new piece of information shocked the guards long enough for the teenage assailant to slip into a tree, unnoticed behind a puff of smoke.
From his new hiding spot, the assassin monitored the scene; he was able to finally calm himself down. The two guards were just catching up to the general area where he teleported. They shined their flashlights up into the tree, but they left it alone in disgust, saying "Only a bird's nest in that tree." The assailant smiled at the foolishness of his ignoramus pursuers as he drew a kunai from another pouch on his belt. With a keen eye and a steady hand he threw the kunai at the first guard. It flew through the air like a buzz saw and planted itself point-first into the back of the guard. Only the ring was left sticking out. The guard let out a final gasp of surprise and fell facedown into the damp foliage of pine needles.
The other guard turned and fired his machine gun into the tree with the "bird's nest" in it, again only splintering bark off the tree. The guard felt a whoosh and heard a rustle in the trees behind him and fired in that direction.
"Nothing but the wind," he said to himself to calm him down.
Another whoosh could be felt; an icy chill flooded down the guard's back like the touch of Death. The guard turned to face the direction it came from and noticed that the kunai in his brother's back was gone. Beads of sweat traced down the guard's nervous features. Another rustle shook the trees. This one brought a few drops of rain down on the guard's face to join the other beads of sweat starting to form. "He's playing with me," he nervously muttered to himself. "The kid's playing with me."
A boom of thunder and a flash of lightning filled the cloudy sky, and the rain started to fall harder. The guard felt for an instant like returning to the nice, warm sanctity of home, escaping the madness, escaping death. But what would his brother do to him if he failed a direct order? Most likely have the other guards riddle him with bullets and feed what was left of him to the security dogs; not what he had in mind to go down like. No, if he was going down, he was going down fighting.
He took up his brother's machine gun in his left hand, his own in his right, and unleashed a torrent of bullets from both barrels. Bark was splintered, branches were torn right off, and the air was thick with pine needles. The guard spun around in a circle, demolishing every tree he saw, but he kept firing. The smoke from the barrels stung his eyes, but he didn't need them. He just kept up the perpetual line of fire until there was nothing except bare tree trunks left for over thirty feet. The rain poured openly on the guard and cooled his smoking barrels. "He couldn't have survived that," the guard wheezed, breathing heavily. "No one could have survived that."
Another flash of lightning pierced the sky and revealed a shadow darting amongst the stripped trees. Thunder clapped through the sky as the guard realized the grim truth: he had survived. When the lightning subsided, a message was whispered into the guard's ear: "You can't kill a phantom out in the open." A sharp blade was thrust up into the guard's rib cavity, piercing several organs. It was quickly ripped out, and the guard fell facedown next to his brother.
The assassin let out a sharp cackle to the background of thunder at his victory. He turned on his heels and slipped into the night without another word.
The X-box executive watched through his rain-speckled window as a whole section of his forest was completely dismantled. He also listened to the menacing laughter of what could only be the assassin. He took out his cell phone again and said, "Release the hounds," into it. He gave a smirk as he stared at the desolation, fingering the assassin's shuriken.
The assassin rested by a tall tree with wide branches to keep out of the rain. His kunai was hanging off of the end of the branch in front of him, using the rain to get clean. With the two guards dead, he could afford to be risky. He even took out a water bottle to replenish himself. After all the work he did, he deserved it.
Unfortunately, his small celebration was short-lived. From the edge of the forest, a howl echoed through it, sending a chill down the assassin's spine. He tucked his water bottle away, grabbed his dripping kunai off of the branch, and bolted back into the woods. Dogs are better trackers than either of the guards could have been, so any distance made was more time to come up with a plan.
The dogs howled again as another clap of thunder rang out. They were on the assassin's trail, enticed by and trailing the blood still on his kunai. The assassin himself realized this the deeper he fled into the woods. No matter how many turns his trail took, the snarling of those persistent rabid dogs kept getting louder.
Suddenly, the assassin's foot struck a concealed tree root, and the world was pulled out from under him like a rug. He slid over the slick pine needles and collided headfirst with a pine tree. His supplies scattered everywhere. The dogs closed in around him, their fangs dripping with fresh blood, a deep red like their eyes. Apparently those guards weren't enough to satisfy these ravenous dogs' appetites.
One of the bigger dogs leapt from the pack, fangs bared at the cringing assassin. The assassin waited for the beast to bite into his flesh, closing his eyes to avoid the carnage. He waited for a second, but nothing happened. The assassin slowly opened one eye to find out what the hold up was; the other one soon joined it.
There, standing in the clearing, was a kid no older than ten! His ice-blue hair was miraculously straight and perfectly crinkled like potato chips, despite the rain and the raggedness of his other clothes. These clothes consisted of a red shirt and purple pants, both torn up by animal claws in several areas. He wore a purple floppy cap, much like the one worn by Link from the Legend of Zelda. On his back was a sheath for what would be a short sword by my standards, but an average sword on him. The mysterious boy was fending off the attack dog with this sword, force-feeding it down the beast's bloody gullet. He tore the blade out of the lifeless dog, and it collapsed without the blade's support.
The other dogs backed off a step, no longer vicious killers. Obviously the big dog was the leader of the pack. To intimidate them more, the boy held up his word and slashed at the air not even a millimeter in front of one of the dogs' nose. It fled into the woods, whimpering all the way. The boy slashed at the other dogs, and they followed their new leader. Satisfied for the time being, the boy took out a handkerchief from his pocket and started cleaning his bloody blade.
The assassin stared confusedly at this strange child who single-handedly defeated a pack of trained security guards. He slowly got up, eyes still on the kid, and started collecting his scattered supplies.
As he did so, the boy shot him a glance, seeming to freeze the assassin in place. His calm, blue eyes shone from his pale face like two blue-fire lanterns from a snowdrift. His frigidly stern features studied the assassin as he continued working on the sword. He took a final wipe from it and sheathed it. Finally, the mysterious boy walked towards the assassin, who was picking up his kunai. The assailant turned towards the boy, and both sets of arctic-blue eyes met.
"What are you doing here?" asked the boy. His suave tone sounded more mature than others of his age group. "Dogs like those go after hardcore criminals, not teenage assassins."
"I'm no common assassin," the assailant replied, a slight edge in his voice. "I am Michael Heilmann, adventurer and avenger of Nintendo's sacred honor."
The mysterious boy spat into the pine needles. "Like I can believe that after the way those dogs were about to devour you."
"I'm not a dog person," I shot back. "Besides, I haven't heard what your name is, hotshot."
"I am Cachuma, a rogue swordsman looking for a certain someone."
So, why are you living in this forest?" I asked him. "You should be out looking for this person."
Cachuma cringed at this remark. "Follow me to my tree house and I'll show you why not." He picked up the dog he killed, threw it over his shoulder, and beckoned for me to follow him.
Cachuma took me down an expertly crafted path where not a single pine needle obstructed the line of vision. At the end of this perfectly crafted path, a single tree stood alone in a clearing. Several boards were roughly nailed to this immense pine. These steps led up to a quaint wooden house craftily hidden amongst a large grouping of pine branches about halfway up the tree.
Cachuma climbed up this tree via the stepladder up to the base of this tree house, two very sturdy branches with boards mounted on them. He beckoned for me to follow him up the ladder. I reluctantly followed, the dog's blood dripping on me practically the whole way up. He pulled on a rope dangling from the bottom of one of the boards, and a hatch dropped down from the floor. I followed as Cachuma clambered inside.
The house was surprisingly tall enough to support my height. However, Cachuma warned me against following him to the far end of the house, for obvious reasons of balance. I obliged to his request and sat near the hatch.
He threw the dog into a bloody corner of the room and walked over to a bundle of fur over in the corner, most likely his bed. He reached underneath the pile and took out a book bound in a blue cover. On its cover was a strange pattern shaped like an hourglass made with perfectly straight lines and circles on each of its five angles. The title of the book was written in a script that I had never seen before.
"I was given this book in the expectance of finding someone who can read it," Cachuma explained. "Unfortunately, all I've found are people trying to burn this book, so that I-"
"-almost failed your mission?"
"Yeah, I guess you could put it that way," Cachuma replied with a chuckle.
"Hey, why don't I try reading your book?" I suggested. "I can read just about anyone's writing back in Williamsport." Cachuma relinquished his book to me, and I started flipping through the pages. My eyes came to a page that was halfway taken up by the same weird cover text written in blue as opposed to the usual black. I closely examined the text, hoping to see a familiar letter, but nothing could be translated.
Suddenly, the text in the book shone with an unnatural red light. Both of us looked at that light with wide eyes and surprised expressions. I didn't know why he was surprised, but my reason was because the text was as clearly understandable as if it had been written in English!
"It's you!" Cachuma breathed.
I didn't know what he was talking about.
"You're the keeper of my book!"
I still drew a blank.
"When a book glows like that, it means that the person holding it has activated its power. Just read the book to prove it."
I was still skeptical about what Cachuma was telling me, but I agreed to read what was in the book. The letters were still unrecognizable, so I sounded out the syllables that I could read: "Sa-fell-oo-mus."
Cachuma instantly unsheathed his sword when he heard the word. A second later, the sword was set ablaze! "Quick! Call out the spell again to put the flames out before the house burns down!"
I did as Cachuma advised, and, sure enough, the flames ceased to burn. "What was that all about?" I asked.
"That was one of my old spells, before all of my power was sealed into that book. Like I said, I am a swordsman."
"Say, Cachuma," I said, a glint of inspiration in my eye, "what say you to a little business proposition?"
"That all depends," Cachuma replied. "What kind of proposition?"